Abstract
This study examined individual differences in the relations among preadolescents' sociomoral understanding and self-understanding, teacher and peer ratings of school behavior. Two hundred and thirty-nine preadolescents (M = 11.9 years; 127 girls and 112 boys) completed tasks concerning perceptions of competence, vocabulary, and peer-rated social competence. Students also participated in a story-telling interview that assessed sociomoral understanding and self-understanding. Results indicated links between various self-concept dimensions and (a) teacher ratings of academic competence, peer aggression (both physical and relational), and prosocial behavior; and (b) general vocabulary ability. Both sociomoral understanding and self-understanding were found to be linked to perceived academic competence for boys only. Independent of vocabulary ability, girls scored higher than boys on perceived behavioral conduct, teacher ratings of relational aggression (Grade 6 only), and self-understanding, particularly a sense of self-agency. Content analysis showed that girls were more likely than boys to refer to their parents when discussing their sense of self-agency. Independent of vocabulary ability, boys scored marginally higher than girls on sociomoral understanding. Results are discussed in terms of curricular implications for inter- and intrapersonal understandings.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Adler, P., and Adler, P. (1998). Peer Power: Preadolescent Culture and Identity. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.
Arsenio, W., and Fleiss, K. (1996). Typical and behaviorally disruptive children's understanding of the emotional consequeneces of socio-moral events. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 14: 173–186.
Astingon, J., and Jenkins, J. (1999). A longitudinal study of the relation between language and theory of mind development. Dev. Psychol. 35: 1311–1320.
Banerjee, R., and Yuill, N. (1999). Children's understanding of self-presentational display rules: Associations with mental-state understanding. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 17: 111–124.
Bjorklund, D., and Kipp, K. (1996). Parental investment theory and gender differences in the evolution of inhibition mechanisms. Psychol. Bull. 120: 163–188.
Bjorklund, D., and Pellegrini, D. (2000). Child development and evolutionary psychology. Child Dev. 71: 1687–1708.
Bosacki, S., Innerd, W., and Towson, S. (1997). Field independence–dependence and self-esteem: Does gender make a difference? J. Youth Adolesc. 26: 691–703.
Bowlby, J. (1979). The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds. Tavistock, London.
Brown, L., and Gilligan, C. (1992). Meeting at the Crossroads. Ballantine, New York.
Bruce, P. (1958). Relationship of self-acceptance to other variables with sixth grade children oriented in self-understandng. J. Educ. Psychol. 49: 229–237.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bruner, J. (1996). The Culture of Education. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bruner, J., and Kalmar, D. (1997). Narrative and metanarrative in the construction of self. In Ferrari, M., and Sternberg, R. (eds.), Self-Awareness: Its Nature and Development. Guilford Press, NewYork, pp. 1–52.
Byrne, B., and Shavelson, R. (1996). On the structure of social self-concept for pre-, early, and late adolescents: Atest of the Shavelson, Hubner, and Stanton (1976) Model. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 70: 599–613.
Cauce, A. (1987). School and peer competence in early adolescence: A test of domain-specific self-perceived competence. Develop. Psychol. 23: 287–291.
Chandler, M. (1987). The Othello effect: Essay on the emergence and eclipse of sceptical doubt. Hum. Dev. 30: 137–159.
Coie, J., and Dorval, B. (1973). Sex differences in the intellectual structure of social interaction skills. Dev. Psychol. 30: 137–159.
Conway, M., and White-Dysart, L. (1999). Individual differences in attentional resources and self-complexity. Soc. Cogn. 17: 312–331.
Crick, N. (1996). The role of overt aggression, relational aggression, and prosocial behavior in the prediction of children's future social adjustment. Child Dev. 67: 2317–2327.
Crick, N., and Bigbee, M. (1998). Relational and overt forms of peer victimization: A multiinformant approach. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 66: 337–347.
Crick, N., and Rose, A. (2000). Toward a gender-balanced aproach to the study of social--emotional development: A look at relational aggression. In Miller, P., and Scholnick, E. (eds.), Toward a Feminist Developmental Psychology. Routledge, New York, pp. 153–168.
Crozier, W., and Dimmock, P. (1999). Name-calling and nicknames in a sample of primary school children. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 69: 505–516.
Cutting, A., and Dunn, J. (1999). Theory of mind, emotion understanding, language and family background: Individual differences and inter-relations. Child Dev. 70: 853–865.
Damon, W., and Hart, D. (1988). Self-understanding in childhood and adolescence. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Deaux, K., and Major, B. (1987). Putting gender into context: An interactive model of gender-related behavior. Psychol. Rev. 94: 369–389.
De Villiers, P. (1999). Language and thought: False complements and false beliefs. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Albuquerque, NM, April 1990.
Dunn, J., Brown, J., and Maguire, M. (1995). The development of children's moral sensibility: Individual differences and emotion understanding. Dev. Psychol. 31: 649–459.
Dunn, J., Cutting, A., and Demetriou, H. (2000). Moral sensibility, understanding others, and children's friendship interactions in the preschool period. Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 18: 159–177.
Edwards, P. (1993). The A Cappella Papers: Self-Esteem and Adolescent Women. Canadian Teachers' Federation, Ottawa, ON.
Elkind, D. (1978). Understanding the adolescent. Adolescence 13: 127–134.
Epstein, S. (1973). The self-concept revisited, or a theory of a theory. Am. Psychol. 28: 404–416.
Fivush, R., and Buckner, J. (1997). The self as socially constructed: A commentary. In Neisser, U., and Jopling, D. (eds.), The Conceptual Self in Context: Culture, Experience, Self-Understanding Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 176–181.
Flavell, J., and Miller, P. (1998). Social cognition. In Damon, W. (Series ed.) and Kuhn, D., and Siegler, R. (Vol. eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology. Vol 2: Cognition, Perception and Language Development (5th edn.). Wiley, New York, pp. 851–898.
Ford, M. (1982). Social cognition and social competence in adolescence. Develop. Psychol. 18: 323–340.
Freedman, J., and Combs, G. (1996). Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. W. W. Norton, New York.
Gergen, M. (2001). Feminist Reconstructions in Psychology. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Double-day, New York.
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. Bantam Books, New York.
Halpern, D. (1992). Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities (2nd edn.). Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Harris, P., Johnson, C., Hutton, D., Andrews, G., and Cooke, T. (1989). Young children's theory of mind and emotion. Cogn. Emot. 3: 379–400.
Harter, S. (1985). Manual for the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC). University of Denver, Denver, CO.
Harter, S. (1999). The Construction of the Self: A Developmental Perspective. Guilford Press, New York.
Harter, S., Waters, P., Whitesell, N., and Kastelic, D. (1998). Level of voice among female and male high school students: Relational context, support, and gender orientation. Dev. Psychol. 34: 892–901.
Hay, I. (2000). Gender self-concept profiles of adolescents suspended from high school. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 41: 345–352.
Hill, J., and Lynch, M. (1983). The intensification of gender-related role expectations during early adolescence. In Brooks-Gunn, J., and Peterson, A. (eds.), Girls at Puberty: Biological and Psychosocial Perspectives. Plenum, New York, pp. 201–228.
Hogan, R. (1969). Development of an empathy scale. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 33: 307–316.
Hughes, C., and Dunn, J. (1999). Theory of mind and emotion understanding: Longitudinal associations with mental-state talk between young friends. Dev. Psychol. 34: 1026–1037.
Johnson, N., Roberts, M., and Worell, J. (eds.) (1999). Beyond Appearances: A New Look at Adolescent Girls. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Jones, M., and Gerig, T. (1994). Silent sixth-grade students: Characteristics, achievement and teacher expectations. The Element. Sch. Jour. 2: 169–182.
Levinson, S. (1995). Interactional biases in human thinking. In Goody, E. (ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 221–260.
Maccoby, E. (1998). The Two Sexes: Growing up Apart, Coming Together. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
MacGinitie, W., and MacGinitie, R. (1994). Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Riverside, Toronto, ON.
Matthews, D., and Keating, D. (1995). Domain specifity and habits of mind: An investigation of patterns of high-level development. J. Early Adolesc. 15: 319–343.
Moore, L., and MacKinnon, D. (2001). Preadolescent girls and the presentation of self: A dramaturgical perspective. Al. J. Educ. Res. 4: 309–324.
Neary, A., and Joseph, S. (1994). Peer victimization and its relationship to self-concept and depression among schoolgirls. Pers. Indiv. Differ. 16: 183–186.
Nelson, K., Henseler, S., and Plesa, D. (2000). Entering a community of minds: “Theory of Mind” from a feminist standpoint. In Miller, P., and Scholnick, E. (eds.), Toward a Feminist Developmental Psychology. Routledge, New York, pp. 61–84.
Pacquette, J., and Underwood, M. (1999). Gender differences in young adolescents' experiences of peer victimization: Social and physical aggression. Merrill-Palmer Q. 45: 242–266.
Pajares, F., Miller, D., and Johnson, M. (1999). Gender differences in writing self-beliefs of elementary school students. J. Educ. Psychol. 91: 50–61.
Pekrun, R. (1990). Social support, achievement evaluations, and self-concepts in adolescence. In Openheimer, L. (ed.), The Self-Concept: European Perspectives on its Development, Aspects and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 107–119.
Rhedding-Jones, J. (2000). The other girls: Culture, psychoanalytic theories and writing. Int. J. Qual. Stud. Educ. 13: 263–280.
Rhodes, J., Grossman, J., and Resch, N. (2000). Agents of change: Pathways through which mentoring relationships influence adolescents' academic adjustment. Child Dev. 71: 1662–1671.
Rosenthal, R., and Jacobsen, L. (1969). Pygmalion in the classroom: Self-fulfilling prophesies and teacher expectations. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Saarni, C. (1999). The Development of Emotional Competence. Guilford Press, New York.
Schultz, L., and Selman, R. (1989). Bridging the gap between interpersonal thought and action in early adolescence: The role of psychodynamic processes. Development and
Sutton, J., and Keogh (ed.) (2000). Social competition in school: Relationships with bullying, Machiavellisanism and personality. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 70: 443–456.
Sutton, J., Smith, P., and Swettenham, J. (1999). Social cognition and bullying: Social inadequacy or skilled manipulation? Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 17: 435–450.
Tannen, D. (1994). Gender and Discourse. Oxford University Press, New York.
Tavris, C. (1992). The Mismeasure of Women. Simon and Schuster, New York.
Unger, R., and Crawford, M. (1992). Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Veith, D. (1980). Recursive thinking and the self-concepts of preadolescents. J. Gen. Psychol. 137: 233–246.
Villaneueva Badenes, L., Estevan, R., and Bacete, F. (2000). Theory of mind and peer rejection at school. Soc. Dev. 9: 271–283.
Vygotsky, L. (1965). Thought and Language. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Wellman, H. (1990). The Child's Theory of Mind. MITPress, Cambridge, MA.
Zarbatany, L., McDougall, P., and Hymel, S. (2000). Gender-differentiated experience in the peer culture: Links to intimacy in preadolescence. Soc. Dev. 9: 62–79.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bosacki, S.L. Psychological Pragmatics in Preadolescents: Sociomoral Understanding, Self-Worth, and School Behavior. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 32, 141–155 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021861902463
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021861902463